


The Way the Lights Went Out

by Medie



Category: Castle
Genre: Community: apocalyptothon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is wrong, Kate. This isn't how the story's supposed to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way the Lights Went Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilyayl](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lilyayl).



> my thanks to [](http://azarsuerte.livejournal.com/profile)[**azarsuerte**](http://azarsuerte.livejournal.com/) for reading on the fly. All remaining errors are mine. Title comes from the Billy Joel song "Miami 2017 (seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)"

The storm starts near dawn. Nothing spectacular. Just enough to fuck up her crime scene. Kate stands beneath an awning, cup of coffee in hand, watching CSU scramble to retrieve evidence. This case is going to be a bitch. Barely any trace to start and it's all headed for the sewers.

She sighs. Perfect.

"Well," Castle says, almost bouncing, "this certainly is an auspicious start." He squints up at the sky, watching lightning streak through the skyscrapers. She watches him watch the storm and tries not to grin at the picture he makes. Circles under his eyes, his third cup of coffee in his hand, and fifth notebook of the morning Castle's gone way beyond his second wind. She's on her third. It is, quite possible, they're both just a _little_ overtired.

She won't say overworked. It's homicide in Manhattan. Castle's the one with the fondness for stating the obvious.

"You sound _excited_," she says, trying to sound annoyed. "Our whole case -- " Kate closes her eyes and starts over. "_My_ whole case is going down the drain."

He sniffs, laughing. "Nah, just going to make it a challenge is all. Come on, Beckett, what's not to love? This would be a pretty good disaster novel, I think," he says. "Erstwhile detective fights mother nature and the clock in her tireless search for justice." He looks away from the sky, at her, a grin on his face.

She raises eyebrows over the coffee cup at him. Lowering it, she chases coffee on her lip before saying, "Thinking of rewriting Nikki Heat?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," he says, laughing. "My editor would shoot me."

"No," Kate says, "but I might." With a smile, she walks out into the rain. There's a murder to solve. A twenty-two year-old college student depending on them for answers to go with the forty year-old soccer mom and the fifty-two year old stockbroker. She's building quite the collection.

Castle's already planning a series.

-

The series dies unwritten. Within a half hour, the warning goes out. A hurricane is bearing down on Manhattan.

-

By lunch, forecasters are screaming, the mayor is panicking, and Kate is grim. Words like "Impossible" "Disaster" and "Apocalyptic" are flung around. Not the first time, but it might be the last.

Castle turns from the window, cellphone in hand. "Did some research once," he says. "Category three storm would put Wall Street under ten feet of water."

"Which is a problem," she says slowly.

"No, it's an annoyance. The problem is that this city can only shelter about 800,000 people and there's well over three million in the low-lying areas." He stabs a number into the phone. Alexis. She doesn't need to see the number to know. "A lot of people are going to die, Kate. Fact of it is, our friends in the morgue are quite probably the only ones who are actually having a good day."

He's not wrong.

Kate rubs her forehead, staring at the computer on her desk. The city is gridlock, the bridges jammed with cars, people on skateboard, bike, horse, foot. Anything and everything that can get them out of the city.

"Most of them aren't going to make it," she agrees, quiet.

"No," he says. "They're not." He throws the phone down with a curse, pushing a hand through his hair. "Cell network's overloaded."

"She'll -- " Kate hesitates, then shrugs. "She's more sensible than half the department combined."

He tries to grin. "True. Probably has the national guard on the way to pick us up right now."

Knowing Alexis, Kate can believe it. She watches him slump into a chair. "How many politicians do you have on speed dial?"

"Enough," he says. "I just -- " he sighs. "This is wrong, Kate. This isn't how the story's supposed to go. I keep looking for the heroic last minute save. The storm magically averted. The team of scientists, stroppy and heroic, working tirelessly to save us all."

Kate looks at her computer again and the latest meteorological update. The system is worldwide, weather patterns disrupted everywhere. The scientists, stroppy and heroic or no, are all a little busy.

-

The storm gets worse. By dinner, Wall Street isn't just under water. It's in ruins. Skyscrapers turn streets into wind tunnels. It's not long before buildings begin to come down.

Evacuation plans turn into hunker down and wait plans. High ground, solid buildings, boats. Anything that means a chance of making it through the night.

New Yorkers are going to ground. What ground is left. The city is a wreck. The storm too dangerous to try and traverse. Everyone's tried. The Navy, Marines, National Guard, and a dozen federal agencies from both sides of the border.

"They say northern storms move faster than southern ones," Esposito says. "It'll be over faster." It's thin hope, but it's all they've got. "We can get out there and do something."

"What?" Ryan asks. "Clean up the bodies?"

"If that's all we can do," Esposito nods, his expression fierce in the flickers of candle light.

Fitting, Kate thinks, that they've ended up in a church. Retreating behind the century old walls to pray the water won't reach them. "There'll be survivors," she says, quiet. "There always are."

She presses her forehead against the brick and looks at Castle. He's slumped against the wall, legs sprawled out, his phone held loosely in his hands. They haven't had cell service for hours. It's down all over the city. Probably the east coast. The cell towers either down or completely obliterated.

By the roar she can hear through the walls, Kate's betting on obliterated. She watches the phone slip through Castle's fingers, dropping to the floor, as he raises his hands to press them against his eyes.

Quietly, she unfolds herself, inching across the floor to sit beside him. "I won't make promises," she says, "but I believe they're okay."

"Yeah," he says, voice rough with unshed tears, "they are. Have to be." He lowers his hands, looking at her. "There's no story without them. There's nothing without them."

She slips an arm around his shoulders, pressing her forehead against his temple. "They are."

"I can't see the story," he says. It's almost to himself. She closes her eyes.

"You'll find it. Maybe the story's in the after."

"And maybe," he says, "the story in the after's not one anyone wants to find."

"When we get out of here," Kate says, slow and deliberate, stringing one word after the other in hopes that, maybe, just maybe, she can keep them both from falling apart. She's hanging on by her fingernails, she can feel him slipping beyond that, hope beaten away by the unrelenting winds. "I am going to find a gun and I am going to shoot you. _I_ am the hopeless cynic around here, remember? Quit stealing my spot."

He huffs a laugh. Weak. Barely audible over the storm's fury, but it's a laugh. "Noted."

One of his arms steals around her too. She can feel the way he's shaking. "Castle -- "

"_Kate_."

"They will be," she says. Confident. Sure. Everything she isn't and everything he needs her to be. "Just trust me."

"Okay."

-

The bodies seem endless. They find Lanie hip deep in them. She's zipping a bag when she sees them. She doesn't smile, here there are no smiles, she starts to cry.

Kate feels tears slip down her own cheeks. She's not surprised to see them on Castle's either. She's even less surprised that he beats her to Lanie, sweeping her off her feet into a bone-crushing hug that Lanie returns just as fiercely.

When he puts her down, Kate takes his place. "We can't find his family," she murmurs, sotto voce, into Lanie's ear.

"They aren't here," Lanie says, just as soft. "I've been looking. No familiar faces, but that doesn't mean..." she looks grim. "There are a _lot_, Kate."

"I know," Kate nods, "but it's something." She pulls back, reluctant to move too far. "We'll keep looking."

He nods. "Yeah. We will."

Kate looks around them at the body bags. Even if he gets his happy ending, there are a lot more families that won't. A lot of families will get no ending at all. No closure. For all the bodies they do find, how many more were swept out to sea, so far that not even God Himself could reach?

She bites her lip and wishes for a time machine.

"You see what I mean, don't you?" Castle says. He's watching her, somber, nothing of the man from yesterday in him now. "There's no story here. No sense. Even if Alexis and my mother walk around the corner in five minutes -- nothing changes." He rubs a hand over his face. "It's too much. No one can make sense out of this."

"You aren't supposed to, Castle," she says, with a sigh. "No one is. You don't make sense out of this, you just survive it." If you can.

She hugs Lanie again. "Be careful, okay?"

Lanie nods. "You too. It's going to get bad out there."

Kate breathes deep. "I know." The aftermath is worse than the disaster. They're not done with the body bags yet.

-

They make it to his apartment after two days of trying. The city is falling apart. The cops balance time between rescuing survivors, recovering bodies, and the gangs roaming the streets.

"The building's still standing," Kate reports.

"Good brick," he says, noncommittal. Scared.

So's she.

As they set the helicopter down on the roof, Kate reaches out, curling a hand around his. He squeezes back and, maybe, somewhere deep, Kate sends up a prayer.

_Please_.

SWAT goes ahead of them. Fanning out through the building. It's SOP right now. Every free-standing structure is a shelter. Every person is a potential hazard.

They've had everyone from street thugs to brain surgeons turn against them. No one's taking chances on anything.

Kate looks at Castle, following her through the darkened hallways, naked and unprotected without a vest. Resources are thin. Too thin. Everyone is outgunned and outnumbered. When she hears the first shot, she yanks him down behind her. "You even _think_ of -- CASTLE!"

He bolts past her, screaming his daughter's name, and the only thing that stops Kate from tackling him, is the sudden silence followed by, "Daddy?"

She slumps against the wall like a rag doll, limp with relief. Across from her, one of the SWAT guys crosses himself and sends a look skyward. "Goes double for me," she says in a mutter.

He grins in the dark. "Score one for our side."

Kate looks up the hall to see Castle embracing his daughter. He suddenly pulls back. "Where the hell did you get a _gun_?"

Alexis shrugs. "It's Grandma's."

"Of course it is," Kate mutters. "Unregistered too, I'm betting." She can hear his mother's excuse now _"Well, I was going to get around to it."_

Kate snorts when, on cue, Martha says the exact same thing. She hadn't seen the woman before, but when she looks now, she can. Bedraggled, arm bandaged, a lurid bruise on her cheek, Castle's mother is very much alive and well. Too stubborn, no doubt, to let a silly thing like a catastrophic hurricane slow her down.

"There's your story, Castle," she says. "The more things change -- " She doesn't finish the thought. A spat of gunfire, outside, but close, gets her attention.

"I think we need to go."

"God, yes," Castle says, jubilant. "When my insurance adjuster gets a look at _this place_?" He fakes a shudder. "It's going to drive the property values into the basement."

It shouldn't be funny, it's a horrible joke, but it is. They're hysterical. Kate knows it. Overtired, stressed out, and facing a future devastated by storms. Not just New York. The world. A world remade by wind and rain. Nothing's going to be the same, but still, she laughs. She laughs until she cries. It feels good. Cleansing.

"I'm going to kill you, Castle," she says, wiping her eyes.

"Maybe later," Castle says, heading back toward his apartment. "I just need to grab a couple things and then we can get out of here. Might be the end of the world, but a man can't go unprepared! I need a pen. I have an idea!"

Kate lets him go. This once, he's earned it.


End file.
